This week has been a fantastic frenzy—more so than usual.

At work Tuesday, an after-hours event that I had been planning for a few months happened. As a part of the marketing team at the Museum of Contemporary Art, I assist with planning lots of events designed to attract new audiences (and potential donors) to the museum, but as the lowest woman on the totem pole, I have never before been charged with leading the organization of an event. So this Tuesday was really my chance to shine.

I have always liked event planning—I planned huge theater fundraisers and events in high school and my role as a writer/producer at the student run television station at Columbia had me constantly organizing events and shoots. But this time I was getting paid so it was different.

The event was called International Night at the MCA and it was an attempt to get the international consulates in Chicago involved with the museum. It was a great success—we exceeded our 30% goal (a useful event planning tip: one should aim to receive 30% of the total guests invited) and everyone had a smashing time and left happy. Free cocktails and dim sum will do that to a person.

After the event, my boss lady took the department out for drinks. We chatted away and for the first time everyone really let their guard down. Except for me—but I’m the youngest and that tells me that I should shut up and take the opportunity to observe the professionals around me. This approach seems to be paying off, because I was praised to high heavens at the bar. My lovely boss lady announced, “I could have an assistant who just schedules things and files—but I have an awesome, smart sweetheart who is always planning cool shit and thinking of innovative, awesome ways to do things!” It was great to have some affirmation that I’m not doing too shabby after all. Being a newbie at this whole post-graduate employment gig, I was nervous that I’ve been being ridiculous at work, but apparently I’m a pretty good little worker, and lucky for me I get to work with a team who comprised of people who are cool, interesting, and amazingly nice people. And they even act that way 99.9% of the time.

Despite the late night Tuesday (I didn’t get in until 1:00ish), I was up and at ‘em Wednesday morning because there was another event that I had to pull together at the museum happening at 11:30am. Despite a slight headache and being a bit too hung over to realize that my skirt and bare legs were completely stupid things to attempt to wear on a day with temperatures that dropped to the 40’s by noon, accompanied by a ferocious wind that threatened to flash my bare ass to all of Michigan Avenue, the event and the rest of the afternoon went off without a hitch.

After buying a pair of overpriced, but completely necessary pants at the Water Tower Place (the fancy mall that is our museum neighbor), Shaun and I were off for some cheap Indian food and to see the annual director’s festival at the Bailiwick Theater.

If you live in Chicago and you have never been to the Bailiwick, you are seriously missing out. They always offer very affordable shows (our tickets were only $10 each! yay!) that feature new directors, amazing new scripts, and you really feel like you are getting to see the freshest, newest of the new stuff. This being said, there is no guarantee that the play is going to be good (the first in the festival had potential, but it was a little lackluster in its lack of plot progression), but I really dig getting to decide for myself if something is awesome. The only way you can do that without being affected by “the critics” is to see weird stuff that no one has heard of yet and deconstructing it’s appeal for yourself. Even if the play blows, I don’t mind as long as I get to decide that for myself. I guess that’s the same reason I’m into contemporary art. You can go to the Art Institute and see a Picasso and you don’t really have to wonder if it’s “good” (whatever that means…) because that’s already been established with history. Contemporary art is stuff made by people who are actually alive, so there’s no real history to confirm that they are awesome—you just have to decide that for yourself.

Anyhow, I’m completely rambling right now. Today was also fabulous because I had my annual evaluation at my other job as a writing tutor and I passed with flying colors. A person from the evaluation committee observed one of my tutoring sessions. Then we had a conference with my boss about what was found in the observation. What was found is this: my session’s rock. Apparently I have a very personable approach and my student writers really open up to me, which is very cool to hear. I think that when you do any job for a while you become a fish in its bowl that is unable to see its own water. It’s just really great when someone points it out for you.

I feel weird to gloat so much about my week—I don’t usually write entries about the actual “current events” of my life—but things have been a bit crappy lately and I’m just so exited to have a week where all my hard work actually pays off. This week kicked ass and I’m sure it will continue to do so. This Saturday my mentee and I are going to see a play called Cinderella Eats Rice and Beans. How could the weekend be anything less than great with a play like that to look forward to? Plus, my mentee is always a riot to hang out with.

Anyhow, this entry is getting long and is written like I am an insane woman who’s high on life and lots and lots of caffeine. The whole point of my blogging tonight was supposed to be to post my tutoring philosophy statement that I had to write (in all my spare time this week—ha!) to accompany my observation at the writing center. My job there is really important to me and I honestly love it, but it is oftentimes difficult to explain what it is that I do there when people ask. My official title is Writing Consultant, but since that is really vague and not quite indicative of what my actual role there is, if you are curious, you can read my little statement to find out more about what this wonderful job entails. If you are not curious—I don’t blame you. I’m sure my life isn’t as fascinating as it feels to me in this moment and this entry is already growing to monstrous proportions. But I think it is worth posting, so here it is. Enjoy! As always, thanks for reading.
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Being Maureen
An Approach to Writing Consultation
© The Author, 2005

I rarely know the full scope of my ideas without verbalizing them. It is not until I hear my musings out loud that I feel a true ownership of them. I need a sounding board in order to possess my thoughts fully. My ideal sounding board is a trusted ally who is committed to helping me pull the thread that will unravel the fabric of my concept to revel the inner-workings of it. A good sounding board cultivates an environment and relationship based on trust and respect where I am able to defend my ideas without feeling defensive; when meeting with this intellectual equal I feel both challenged and nurtured.

I met my ideal sounding board in middle school; she was my best friend Maureen. Both Maureen and I were avid readers, artists, dreamers, and journal writers. We loved to read our journals aloud to one another. Originally we shared our writing—ranging in topic from the injustice of brusel sprouts and parents to the absurdity of belly buttons and udders—to simply bond with each other. Soon though, our readings became a way for us to receive feedback and to explore our ideas further. Our fun game was the catalyst that let us evolve into the sophisticated writers and thinkers that we now are as adults. Maureen was my first writing consultant and she was my first student. I so enjoyed the experience that I have always made sure to seek out creative peers to help me develop my ideas like she did.

Seeking out creative peers has not always been easy. After high school, I moved away from my hometown to attend Eastern Michigan University. Like many college freshmen, I felt very detached from any community there. I was unable to find a creative safe-haven that welcomed me fully and nurtured my ideas. Without having a creative community to indulge me with their opinions on my writing and artistic process, not only did I grapple with understanding the breadth of my own thoughts, but I had no motivation to create writing or art to express them. For the first time in my life, I did not write anything. Without a trusted ally to act as my sounding board, I was crippled as an artist and my emotional well being suffered. I became restless with fragmented concepts; I became hesitant to make a decision. I was depressed.

Transferring to Columbia in my sophomore year promised something different. Columbia students have an enormous advantage over their peers at other academic institutions. Although all new students leave behind the people they trust to share their creative selves with back home, Columbia College students have the Columbia College Writing Center to provide comparable creative support—or at least that’s what I strive to do here. It is my sincere pleasure to be that creative ally to writers at Columbia College Chicago.

I am a writing consultant because I understand a person’s need for a sounding board. Also, however lofty a goal it may seem, I believe that ultimately society will suffer if individuals are unable to express themselves eloquently and fully. More importantly, the individuals who are unable to articulate their thoughts may have their happiness and health clouded by frustration and angst. I can not watch people struggle when I know I might be able to help them by doing something as natural as acting as their sounding board.

It is simple enough to state that my philosophy as a writing consultant is to act as a sounding board for student writers, but the methods I use to employ that philosophy are very specific, multi-faceted, and they leave me happily exhausted at the end of the day.

At the beginning of an hour-long session with a student writer, I always ask the writer how his or her writing life is coming along and how their “real life” is currently affecting it. When engaging in this initial dialogue with my writers, I really listen to them. My body leans towards them, I am making eye contact, I am careful not to interrupt, and my face is open. From the very begging, I like to create an environment where the writer feels listened to and respected.

When the writer is ready to read his or her work aloud, I am sure to make a copy of the piece, so that I can be sure I am never marking my notes (note taking is a part of my intellectual process) on the author’s paper. I encourage the writer to make their own marks if they are note takers. I also ask the writer if there is anything in particular he or she is focusing on with this draft. This enables me to pay special attention to it.

After the reading is over and it is time to discuss the work, first and foremost, I inquire what the author thought about the piece after reading it aloud. Oftentimes authors hear something new in the work day to day, even if they are on the third of fourth draft. I try to format thought provoking questions and observations about the specific items that the author noticed during this particular read, in order to make sure we are discussing the items that the writer is interested in working on.

Next, I facilitate a conversation about the items for which the writer requested special attention prior to the reading. Most of the time, these areas are those that the student writer is eager to hear someone else’s feedback on. When providing my feedback, I am always careful to use specific examples to support my points. I try to phrase my statements during this portion of the session in a very gentle, task oriented way such as, “You mentioned prior to the reading that you wanted to look out for run on sentences. There seems to be one on the third page, second paragraph. Would you like to go over ways to break those two thoughts up, or do you feel pretty confident about how to handle that particular instance?” The students are often able to amend the issue immediately, but if they aren’t able to and we refer to A Writer’s Reference together, at least they don’t come away from the session feeling as if their tutor assumed that they were anything less than intellectual equals.

It is important to me that the student writers that I consult feel ownership of his or her work and that they direct its progress. With these goals in mind, I am very conscientious—both in life and in tutoring sessions—never to use the word should. This word is dangerous and it strips the writer of their ownership. If I do need to communicate that something is incorrect, I try not to say, “You should put in a comma here.” I really make an effort to say, “I might consider putting a comma here if I were writing this sentence. It really gives the items in your list distinction when you separate them with a comma, which is why grammar gurus consider it a rule. Am I making sense?” When I use phrases like this, writers are more receptive to learning this rule and their status as my intellectual equal is not threatened. If they seem to feel silly or worse, apologetic for their misunderstanding of cosmetic items like spelling and grammar, I always remind them that we are equals and that they know plenty of things that I am clueless about. It is important to the effectiveness of my sessions that the writer never loose touch with that.

Tying up the session, I am always eager to offer words of genuine encouragement. Reading is one of my passions, and I find this very useful when offering words of support. I often find myself saying things like, “You know, I read an article in The New Yorker the other week that incorporated the author’s cultural heritage with his eating habits like you do in this essay. If you ever consider submitting your writing for publication, you could revisit this piece—you’ve obviously got a very publishable approach to discussing your cultural heritage.” The student writers that I have the privilege of seeing really do have phenomenal ideas, and oftentimes my acknowledgment of that gives the writer a reason to really put in the elbow grease it takes to make a great concept into a publishable product.

I strive to build a relationship with student writers that demonstrates my dedication to helping them express exactly what they feel. I am adamant that the student writer acts as the authority on his or her work—I just serve the author as a friendly representative of their larger audience, telling them what I hear in their work, questions I have about it, and connections I make to it. I assure my writers that I am committed to help them express their message—I will never tell them what they should want to say. I want my students to feel safe, un-judged, and celebrated. In short, I try to be a “Maureen” to every writer I have the pleasure of consulting.
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P.S.
What happened during your last beautiful week?

good night, sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite.
sweet dreams
bad dreams
“Who do you think you are?”

Your girl

“When I was pregnant with you, I read Mark Twain, I ate cabbage soup
when you were born, you looked at me and you scowled”
I scared you

Holding hands in the car
“Your dad never changed your diper once when you were a baby”
baby car
it was so small we called it that

Nannar died, grandma moved away
I only had one mother
“Tony and I are getting married”
soon I shared her with two brothers

Stealing time
I’d brush my teeth
While she applied her model-perfect makeup
“Your posture is horrible. Suck in your gut.”

Mother knows best.

If I Ran the ZOO…

I was tagged by jerjonji to do this exercise. The name of the game is to find five things you could be from this list inspired by the Dr. Seuss book If I Ran the Zoo and complete the sentence on how it would contribute to society.

Here’s the list to choose from:

If I could be a painter…If I could be a gardener…If I could be a missionary…If I could be a chef…If I could be an architect……If I could be a psychologist…If I could be a librarian…If I could be an athlete…If I could be a lawyer…If I could be an inn-keeper…If I could be a professor…If I could be a writer…If I could be a llama-rider…If I could be a bonnie pirate…If I could be an astronaut…If I could be a world famous blogger…If I could be a justice on any one court in the world…If I could be married to any current famous political figure…

At first glance, this exercise seems like an awesome amount of fun, but when you take a closer look at the options it is a bit lackluster (no offense jerjonji—you know I love ya!). Plus, I’m starting to realize that my contributions to society have little to do with my profession. If I were any of these things I would still recycle, volunteer, and be nice, which I suspect do more to make the world a better place than any of the other loftier ideas I have could ever hope to. Anyhow, here it is:

 If I could be a Bonnie Pirate (which, coincidently I already am), I’d start my own show, called Arrg! A Pirate Show! I’d get Captain Morgan’s Rum to sponsor me so there would be no commercial breaks. I’d have guest stars that would play the pesky “stow away” and I’d sail the seven seas with a parrot on my shoulder. The parrot would have chronic diarrhea, to satisfy my inclinations to low brow comedy. I’d burgle from major political figures and anyone else who deserves it, like James Dobson. During campaign season, if politicians running for election and looking to score “coolness” points, they’d guest star on my show as themselves. Except James Dobson. He wouldn’t be invited. Arrg! The Pirate Show! would air on comedy central, slotted before the Dave Chappelle Show. It would be too cutting edge, sardonic, and satirical to receive any accolades from the academy, but the season DVD’s would sell like hot cakes, confirming its status as having an underground, cult following. 

If I could be a writer, I’d be hip and savvy and immeasurably cool. My husband (who will also be a famous writer at this point) and I would invite David Sedaris and his sister Amy over to our amazing New York flat, where we would sip wine and talk about the funny side of the worlds atrocities and bittersweet reality. I would read my personal essays on NPR. Hit television shows would be created based on my personal essay writing (I’m imagining it would look a lot like the show Freaks and Geeks). I would sell the rights to these show ideas for millions and stay on the writing staff as a consultant. I would chronically travel the world and gather more experiences and observations to write about. I would try to change the world through satire in the admirable fashion of John Stewart.

I would be happy just writing, but since I crave a creative, youthful community in order to flourish, I’d create a not-for-profit (with all my millions made from my writing) dedicated to encouraging young people’s creativity and a teen’s ownership and right to an opinion. With the help of knowledgeable artist mentors, the not-for-profit would help teens publish their writing, produce thier plays and their dance and music performances. Mentors and staff would be dedicated to assisting teens in creating films and visual art, and showing this fine work. The not-for-profit would be big and sprawling and there would be at least one in every state. They would be in extremely rural areas and in extremely urban areas. They would be in every kind of ethnic community. I would hire all my creative, nurturing friends to manage them for me and I would visit every site at least once a year to host workshops.  

 If I could be married to any current political figure it would be Ukrainian Prime Minister Yuliya Tymoshenko, because she is a hottie.

Other hotties include San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, simply because he had the balls to start a solid and very public dialogue about gay marriage, even though the supreme court had to come in and crash the party. In my opinion, Newsom’s comment that, “Denying basic rights to members of our community will not be tolerated” is the sexiest thing any living politician has ever said. Newsom is not as physically attractive as Yuliya Tymoshenko, but what can you do? Either way, I think I may be better off if I were the famous politician and Shaun could just still be married to me. Because I am way hotter than      either of these politicians, and as we know, hotness is a politician’s first          priority.

  If I could be a missionary, I’d keep to myself so that I wouldn’t be able to bribe others with food and clothes. Kept snug in solitary confinement, I would stop requesting that people abandon their cultures and traditions in order to become more like me. I would probably feel just as self-righteous as any good missionary in doing these favors for the world, so that’s at least one perk for me.

If I could do justice on any one court in the world I would become enraged and horrified and depressed that it was my destiny to only do justice in one court. I would go insane trying to sort through which one should take priority. I would wind up foaming at the mouth and senile. I’m better off multi-tasking.

So, that is my five. I get to pass this little Internet game on now, although I grow hesitant to do so. I hate assigning people to do things—it seems weird, as I enjoy reading the things you already post. So I won’t “tag” anyone, per say. But if you’d like to put a comment in my box about what you would do if you went rabid in a zoo (or something along the lines of changing the world based on having a few shoddy professions), feel free! It’s pretty fun to do. Add your own shoddy profession to have if none of the ones listed above jump out at you.

If I ran the zoo……

I’d make a few changes,

                                             That’s just what I’d do…

All I Want is Food and Creative Love
© The Author, 2005

The United States Department of Agriculture thinks I eat 900% more veggies a day than I need to. I’m almost eating as many fruits as I need, but I’m way behind in the bread and meat department. The new Food Pyramid has me figured out: I’m a vulture at the Farmer’s Market but I’m nearly too broke to afford the beans, lentils, milk, and eggs at the grocery store once I’ve finished salivating at the veggie stands, let alone have any dough left over for bread and meat. But I don’t mind. I like my veggies. I like digging into a good spoonful of all natural peanut butter (that’s right, I like the goopy, messy, greasy kind best!), or scraping together a handful of soy nuts, or munching away at beans and legumes at dinner to acquire my daily dose of protein. Typically I eat a bowl of oatmeal in the morning, a salad and fruit at lunch, and a “fancy” salad at dinner. I always thought this made me a pretty healthy gal, but the new food pyramid seems to think otherwise. The new food pyramid wants to sell me lots and lots and lots of meat.

Besides the outrageous cost, another, very secondary factor in my reluctance to buy meat is those damn PETA ads that tell you all sorts of things you were better off not knowing. I’ll try not to ruin your appetite here, but I will tell you this much: every time I am standing am standing at the butchers case, I dry heave quietly to myself as I remember a grotesque PETA video that my friend sent me in an email. It featured a bunch of fat assed turkeys suffering from a bad case of mange struggling to make it to their food bowl. You see this was quite a challenge for one turkey in particular because there were about a zillion other turkeys (literally—a zillion), all the size of woolly mammoths crammed together in an area the size of my cubicle at work. Also, it didn’t help matters that this little turkey’s legs had broken clean in half under the weight of his gargantuan, hormone fattened body. I’m sure that’s not the worst PETA has to offer, but I refuse to see anymore or read any more. It’s too nauseating.

So am I a vegetarian? As a rule, if I’ve got to stomach buying the meat raw and cooking it I am. But I’ll order a good piece of bleeding veal at a restaurant any day, as long as someone else is paying.

For those of you who haven’t gone online to check out the new online food pyramid for yourself, I highly recommend it. Instead of a formulaic diet (because formulas are devil spawn), it calculates your age, height, weight, activity level, and what you generally eat in a day. The only thing that it’s lacking seems to be the capacity to scan in pictures in of your parents. Then it could tell you how to avoid their nastier traits and to gauge your metabolism. I’d be interested to see what this feature would say about me since my dad is slightly smaller than Jobba the Hut and slightly larger than a sumo wrestler, while my mom is barely visible when viewed from the side (I know my mommy dearest would appreciate it if I mentioned that he did not look like this while they were together, while she has only gotten more gorgeous over time).

The only downside to the new food pyramid is that it triggers my inner conspiracy theorist. When I put my demographic information into the computer and then check a list of foods I’ve eaten that day (many are name brand, you will notice—oatmeal does not exist apparently if it is not Quaker oatmeal) and my email address, I get the sneaking suspicion that Uncle Sam is whoring my dietary habits off to the marketing departments at Kraft and General Mills. What is to stop them from telling me that I need to consume 900% more fruit roll ups when the economy is suffering from low fruit roll up purchases? You never know—those things are made out of petroleum, I hear. ::smile::

Anyhow, for those of you whose visit to http://www.mypyramid.gov/ come away with advice to eat more veggies, here is a recipe from a girl who apparently eats way too many of them. This salad is of the “fancy” variety, and it is suitable as a meal at dinner if you haven’t gone for a run that day and have been sitting on your ass in a cubicle, growing staler and lardier by the minute. In fact, it’s what we ate tonight!

Bon Appetite!

Beats, Beans, and Cheesy Treats

2 beetroots (don’t buy the canned kind—they’re gross!)
1 bunch of baby Spinach (the trendiest of all the veggies right now)
1 clove of garlic
1 tbs capers (drained)
1 small handful of pine nuts (also called Pignoli if you’re Italian or me pretending to be)
1 lb green beans
Some yummy goat cheese (I cant measure this for you—I don’t know how much cheese you like!)
1 tbs olive oil
1 tbs red wine vinegar
Some freshly ground pepper (note: if you use the pepper, you have to grind it like Dana Carvy in the Pepper Boy SNL skit. Your mantra must become, “would you like the fresh-a-peppa?” If you can’t live up to that, then you can’t include the pepper in the recipe. Sorry, that’s just the way it has to be.)

Boil some water in a big pot. While that is happening, give your beetroots a good scrub—they can be filthy. Get your garlic out and chop it up really small with your big knife that looks like it belongs in a horror film—you know, the big, pointy triangle one. Be sure you give the garlic a good smash with the flat end of the blade (all pointy, sharp bits pointing away from you) before taking the skin off. Rachel Ray taught us to do that on the Food Network. It “releases the aroma,” but more importantly, it makes you look like a pro chef.

Okay. Your water is boiled now, so put your beets in the pot and cover it. Let it boil like mad for 30 minutes. While that is happening, get another pot and bring another batch of water to a boil.

While the water in pot #2 is working up to a boil and pot #1 is rockin’ away at your beets, clean up your green beans. Rinse them really good and snap off any weird looking bits, which are generally found at the tips.

Alas! Your beans are clean and your pot #2 is furiously churning. Add the beans to the pot, cover, and reduce the heat.

While pot #2 is cooking your green beans, get a little fry pan and put your tbs of olive oil in it and warm it up. Add your garlic and stir a bit. Then add your pine nuts and capers. DON’T LET THESE BURN! That will ruin everything. Last time it happened a t-rex was trying his hand at a new glaze for his brontosaurus burger and the garlic burned and it caused extinction. So don’t even try it! Watch it like a hawk who is curiously interested in pine nuts and garlic until it is browned but not burned and then you will turn back into a human and transfer these goodies to a nearby bowl, where you will whisk a bit of red wine vinegar into them with a fork.

Now, shut off the burner for the beans (no—they haven’t been cooking long—mushy beans are yucky!), and dump the whole thing in the spaghetti strainer you have magically waiting for you in the sink. Now put the drained beans back in their pot.

Go fetch your beetroots. Drain them and run cool water over them for a bit, then let them just chill (literally—they need to cool off) for a bit.

Get your baby spinach and arrange it on two plates (oh yeah—I forgot to tell you—this only serves about 3 people at best and I make this for my malnourished husband and I). Arrange a small handful of beans on each plate. Top this with the un-burnt caper/garlic/pine nut concoction.

Oh look! Now the beetroots are cool. Go to them with some paper towels. Rub them with force. No, not malice—I said force—they are slippery and if they squirm away from you while you are maliciously rubbing they will land on your clothes and stain them! And then everyone would know that you wear the same pants to work everyday because while you may have more than one pair of khakis, you defiantly would not have more than one pair with a matching beet root stain on them. Anyhow, when you do this rubbing, the skins will rub off on the paper towel and you have two naked, pretty beetroots. Cut the ends off, and quarter them. The beetroots should be still a bit warm, but not scalding unless you did this step too soon because you are a masochist who likes manhandling hot veggies.

Now put a bit of beetroot atop each salad and add your goat cheese crumbles.

Happy eating!

What foods do you dig?

Free Falling
© The Author, 2005

Thursday afternoon sanity and comfort enveloped me in the most unlikely place. Who would have guessed that such lofty inner peace could be found at Union Station? Somebody ought to tell monks suffering silence vows, head shavings, and rugged mountain living that they need only to happen upon a good street musician to soothe their need for a harmonious soul and connectedness to mankind.

To be sure, I am talking about good street musicians here—not the guy who daily assaults Red Line passengers with a nasal, a capella bastardization of “Under the Boardwalk,” frequently letting the harmony sag into a dreary, minor key version of the song. This is not the type of music that the aforementioned monks should feel at ease about, although I doubt a monk would get even half as annoyed as I do about it.

The type of serenade I am talking about is nourishing. It feels like getting a warm hug from someone wearing a soft t-shirt fresh from the dryer. You can inhale the music and it smells and feels like a mug of steaming tea. No matter what urgency pushed you on only minutes prior, suddenly you are awakened and alive and preciously present when a good street musician shares their magic with us lucky pedestrians. As corny at it seems, whenever I hear it, I am moved; my eyes well up with tears and I am suddenly aware of everything inside of me, which is so easy to become disconnected with during the course of the daily grind.

My mamacitta is in from Michigan visiting us this weekend, and Thursday I was eagerly awaiting her arrival at Chicago’s Union Station during the insanity of rush hour. I had just come from work, and I was tired and irritated at careless rolling suitcase drivers tripping me and cutting me off as I navigated my way to the Amtrak area. I was about 20 minutes early and the tea stand in the food court was calling my name.

I ordered a ridiculously overpriced ginger mint tea which furthered my agitation (I might as well bought an entire box of tea bags at the grocery store for the amount I paid to litter the earth with yet another paper cup), and I was about to head back into the bustle to wait for my mom, when a familiar chord drew my eyes to a guitarist. He was playing guitar and singing amidst a nearby landscape of food court tables occupied by commuters of all sorts.

I stopped and listened to him, sucked into an emotion wrought rendering of Tom Petty’s “Free Falling.” He sang for knackered businessmen nursing cool beers from plastic cups, letting the alcoholic fizz soften their bones before heading home. He sang for an Amish woman absentmindedly shoveling MSG laden toxic red chicken from a Styrofoam take-away container into her mouth. He sang for a beautiful Hispanic woman sipping a smoothie and running her hands gently over her bountiful, pregnant belly. He sang for a homeless man drifting to sleep on a pile of discarded Chicago Tribune’s. And he sang for me.

His voice lilted and dipped and brimmed with feeling and he played his acoustic guitar sweetly to the music of Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, and Melissa Etheridge. Here, a beautiful black man with fuzzy hair peeking out of a worn blue baseball cap, serenaded commuters with songs that at that moment seemed to have the unabashed grit and the grounded dedication that is the general idea of the Chicago—The City of Big Shoulders. The musician conveyed a vague collective feeling of searching for something bigger than your reality, but not having the foggiest idea of where to find it. And somehow we all needed to know we weren’t alone in that.

Soon, a crowd gathered around the musician. A matronly black woman shushed an annoying blonde girl with a cell phone that was probably cemented to her pretty little head; everyone wanted to listen to this guy play. The tables were filling up quick so I grabbed a seat at a table occupied by a middle-eastern woman draped in a brilliant purple sari gently rocking her baby girl back and forth in a stroller.

“He’s good, no?” The woman asked me.

I looked around at all the ethnicities, ages, religions gathered around to find solace in this man’s music and smiled.

“Yeah. He’s really good.”

Where have you stumbled upon peace lately?

My apologies for the melodramatic post this weekend. Something that my husband and I had been counting on and preparing for all year fell through in a way that completely blindsided us. I’m an over-zealous girl and my Achilles heel is my confidence. I let my faith in myself and others and my enthusiasm for life eliminate all doubt. Usually this works out great for me (my mamacita calls it “my sparkle.” Aww, shucks…thanks mom!), but I am starting to realize that perhaps a little doubt is healthy. That way when rejection happens (as is bound to happen sometimes to those who actively pursue the life they desire), it is not so completely out of left field. Anyhow, while I can’t get into details in my blog (this being a public forum and all), for those of you who it matters to: Scotland is a no go. But after a completely devastating weekend, Plan B’s are in motion. For those of you who are wondering what I’m talking about, give me a few months and I’ll dish.

After sticking with me through a brief depression and food poisoning, I think you all deserve a little cheer. This essay is void of angst and brimming with happy, disgustingly cute things. Enjoy!
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We’ll Make Great Pets
© The Author, 2005

It has occurred to me that our cat thinks he is the master of our apartment. And really, who am I to argue? Giles Alejandro Scimitar is here hour after hour, day after day, watching us trot in and out of his palace. We go to work so that he can lounge in the lapse of luxury, nibbling on the finest that Purina has to offer. Our kitty does not feel the least bit guilty if his expensive food is wasted in the throes of leaving a juicy, quivering hairball laying in wait on the hardwood floor beside our bed for my bare foot to meet its early morning doom. In fact, I think he secretly enjoys it. Giles is King and he answers to no one.

Pets are such a queer idea, really. How did anyone conceive that it would be a good idea to have an animal roaming about their living space? I am tempted to argue that the trouble of an animal lurking about your quarters is worth the inconvenience (not to mention the potential injury), if only for a snuggle every now and again. But somebody had to domesticate pets. And something makes me doubt that somebody snuggled much with their bobcat or jackal before it bit their face off. Perhaps violence was the whole point—a wild animal living in your quarters was the Stone Age equivalent to my keychain Mace. But when did man’s best weapon become man’s best friend?

One of my favorite pet stories is belongs to my partner. When he was a skinny, gap toothed, six-year-old kid with oversized glasses, his dad thought that he might be able to coach the nerdiness and inclination to comic books out of him with a good old fashioned fishing trip. They embarked on their trip in the early morning and by late afternoon, Shaun was getting crabby; they hadn’t caught a thing. Nothing was biting but the mosquitoes (I always wanted to write a hillbilly line like that!), and they were ready to pack up and head home when suddenly, Shaun’s line started wriggling and struggling against him. With the help of his dad, he reeled in his first love, and its name was Fish.

Upon seeing his shimmering aquatic friend, everything that Shaun’s dad had told him about the point of fishing (catching fish for food or throwing them back until they get bigger) went out the window.
“It’s my fish!” Shaun argued when his dad tried to throw it back, “And I’m keeping him!” For some ungodly reason, my in-law’s allowed Shaun to keep a four-inch rainbow trout as a pet in an un- aerated five gallon bucket of water, set on the back porch to boil in the sweltering Michigan heat.

When Fish died, Shaun was devastated. He cried for days. He had lost a dog during a move before, but nothing compared to the loss of this swimmy little beast. His mom cut all the pictures of fish out of his coloring books, fish sticks were banned from the house, and all mentions of water, fish, or wetness were prohibited. He could barely even stand to bathe, for the water on his skin was too similar to how the scales and fins of Fish must have felt in his final days.

Now if that’s not an example of kindred spirits, I don’t know what is.

My first pet was Sasha Cat: a grey fur ball with shit for brains. Unlike normal cats, who feel the instinct to burry their poop, Sasha cat was fine with crapping in wide-open spaces. She had no qualms about popping a squat on the linoleum of the kitchen floor, or laying a fresh load atop the living room coffee table. Something was wrong with Sasha Cat.

My family thought it would be a brilliant idea to get a dog when I was in fifth grade. Instead of picking a reasonable dog, like an old, worn out one on death row at the pound, they nabbed a high-strung yellow lab fresh from its mother’s womb. Jessie Jane enjoyed about two years with our family before puberty brought out her forbidden desires. Jessie Jane had the hots for my mom.

Now, you can’t really blame Jessie; my mom is a good-looking lady. But her unquenchable thirst for my mom took on obsessive, jealous tendencies as time went on. She especially grew ornery when my little brothers (Anthony was in kindergarten at the time and Julian was in preschool) joined my mom and Jessie Jane in the garden. The final straw came when Jessie leapt from my mom’s side to pummel and nearly devour Julian as he emerged from the house to hang out with our mom. After that, there was no more Jessie.

At some point in a child’s life, they want a pet simply because it promises to raise their level of coolness. For me, that pet was a Peach Faced, Hand-Fed Love Bird. I imagined that I could train my bird to perch on my shoulder like a pirate’s parrot, and let it snuggle up to me like in the pictures from “Peach Faced, Hand-Feb Love Birds: An Owner’s Manual.” But once I got him home, I cursed the book for never showing a picture of the bird shitting down the owners back or furiously biting the owner’s earlobe off. Aside from frequently gagging at the smell of the birdcage, I ignored my bird for the most part, so much so that my mom was constantly nagging me to take care of the swarthy thing.

One Friday I was headed out the door to spend the weekend with my dad.
“Did you feed your bird?” She asked. I honestly couldn’t remember, but my room seemed to be a landfill seeds, so I answered, “Yes—God! I can take care of my own friggin’ bird!”

Imagine my horror when I returned Sunday night to find the nightmarish thing laying stiff and cold on the bottom of his cage. I recoiled, dry heaving; I had never seen a dead thing before. And then I noticed—oh shit—the bird feeder was empty. Without missing a beat, I filled my dead bird’s feed bowl to the brim with seeds and I fetched it some fresh water.

And then I screamed.

My brother had a similar experience where an innocent animal was sacrificed to the childhood craving for a trend-setting pet. Make that two innocent animals.

Like me, my brother was in middle school when the trendy pet became a pressing, immediate concern. Instead of a bird, my brother simply had to own a gerbil. You’d think that my parents would have learned that a today’s desire for the perfect pet is tomorrow’s riga mortis-ed corpse, but my brother just so happened to conceive of the idea while all five of us were crammed into the family minivan driving two days straight to Colorado to visit my mom’s parents. After my parents refused his first suggestion that when we get home they buy him a gerbil, he thought of a new tactic. He refused to say anything other than, “Gerbil,” in a monotone, seething voice for the entire trip.

“Say hello to Grandma and Grandpa, Anthony.”
“Gerbil.”
“How ‘bout a game of mini-golf?”
“Gerbil.”
“What kind of sandwich do you want?”
“Gerbil.”

At wits end, my parents bought him not one gerbil, but two once we got back to Michigan. And in a month, they were such second-class citizens that Anthony kept them in a fish tank in his closet for about a year.

One day during the summer, I spotted my brother gagging and flailing out of his room.
“What?” I asked.
“My gerbil died.”
“Did you feed it?”
“Yeah! Just yesterday!”

But when I helped him fish out the corpse of the gerbil with a pair of chopsticks (because he had bloated up to such enourmous proportions that even our biggest soup ladle couldn’t handle him), I doubted that the gerbil was a healthy, happy, alive little bugger just the day prior. His body was decomposing and liquefying into the surrounding cedar shavings. The other little Gerbil had been nibbling away at the dead one and was growing feral and crazed now that we were taking his food source away. The live one died shortly after.

Kids should not have pets.

However, bonding with an animal as an adult can be one of the most soothing, soul nourishing, quirky things that can happen to you. As feisty and stinky and incessantly noisy our kitty can be, he is our rancid little ball of fat fluff forevermore. He calms me when I ‘m sad and makes me laugh when I am jolly. He even has tricks! Bring out any item that is vaguely furry, be it winter hat, stuffed animal, or faux fur blanket, and he’ll mount and mate with it. He thinks it quite impressive. Giles Alejandro Scimitar is eager to meet every new person to come to our home; he’ll jump right up on you and sniff your mouth so that he not only knows you, but everything you’ve eaten that day.

While I don’t quite understand the bond between us, I felt it from the moment I looked into his cute, round little eyes at the Anti Cruelty Society over 2 years ago.

“Love me,” he said. And I did.

Who is your ball of fluff?

Thanks for all your concern. I felt better Monday night, but the rest of this week unfolded to reveal bad news after more bad news. I’m too shaken to write anything right now. No one is sick, no one is dying, no one’s heart is broken, so its not tragedy. It’s just a stupid optimistic me, getting my bubble burst and as always, being so damned surprised about it. I am embarrassed and sick to my stomach about how foolish, how naive, and how completely delusional I can be. I don’t really know if I can write anything right now. Please bare with me—I might feel up to something later on this week. And I may or may not be able to explain myself then.

I am a dumb ass.

The snake egg that was yesterday’s fun food exploration has hatched inside of me.
Today, a hateful serpent is writhing in my stomach; it’s hateful tail thrashing about the contents of my belly angrily, leaving me at the mercy or the toilet—perpetually wondering from which end of me my bile will exit.

Already a broke ass hoe, now thanks to the snake egg that has left me retching at home today, I can expect a smaller check next payday.

I am dying.

Never again.
Until next time.

P.S.
Since I am no longer amused by this, I don’t mind bursting your bubble. I’m not entirely certain it was an actual snake egg. It could have been anything’s egg–except a chicken’s. But I lead you on for kicks with this quote:
“It was about the size of an egg you might find in a small birds nest. Or, as my wild imagination suggested, a snakes den.”
Oh yeah, “I ate a snake egg today” probably diddn’t help much either.
Trust me, if my imagination was wild yesterday, it is rampant today. Now I’m certain it was the egg of an evil serpant.

Unidentifiable Floating Objects
© The Author, 2005

I ate a snake egg today.

It all started with me waking up sick of the city. For those of you who are city dwellers without cars, you know what I am talking about. No matter how much you love your city, you are bound to wake up some days and feel like the masses of concrete, the sidewalk dog shit, the spilling over garbage cans, and that general smell is threatening to suffocate you. And you’ve got no car to escape it.

At first, I thought I could cure my unrest with my typical treatment; one bakery cookie and stroll about the neighborhood. But the bakery cookie was chewy today. And my sandal was slip siding around on the sidewalk due to some restaurant grime I’d acquired on the sole of it from a leaking garbage can that was being pushed along by a dude in front of me.

“Let’s just rent a car today and get out of here,” I turned to my partner and suggested with a smile. I checked my checking account online that morning—I had zero in my account, $8.00 owed to “checking plus,” and a grocery list for the veggie stand. And we were already blowing a portion of my $13 allotted cash for the produce market on cookies. I’m guessing his checking account was similarly doomed because my partner laughed out loud.

Being broke sucks.

“Do you want to go to Stanley’s?” my partner asked me, referring to the afore mentioned produce market.

I glared at him.

The bus was coming—which never happens at convenient times. And we were right near a stop. “Let’s get out of here and find somewhere new.”

Thirty minutes later we were in Vietnam, located conveniently off the Red Line at Argyle.

A small strip of noodle shops, bakeries, and waving lucky cat and potted bamboo stores lined street. Our eyes were glued to the neon signs, our noses were tickled by a new stench (a fishy one). We went into a local grocery store and browsed the strange items; rows of whole fish on ice watched us from cloudy round eyes, red bloody sausages encouraged us to breathe from our mouths, and rows of exotic candies made us smile. A bag of 75 cent Jackfruit chips seemed the perfect purchase after a fun twenty minutes or so of marveling at all the strange and funky smelling goodies.

After munching the jackfruit chips—which differed only in color (these were orange) and slightly in texture (there were airier) from dried banana chips—and nosing about the shops, my husband was getting hungry.

We moseyed over to the restaurant that had the least amount of white people in it, which was a big lunchroom type of place whose sign was a green army tank that curiously read, Tank Noodle.

We entered Tank Noodle and were seated at a huge, round table with a lazy Susan center cluttered with hot sauces and cups filled with plastic chopsticks.

“Isn’t this a big table for just two people?” I whispered to my husband.

Indeed it was. Soon, two hungry Vietnamese guys were seated at our table with us. We took our clues as to how to eat our delicacies from them.

The worst thing about Tank Noodle is its impossibly huge menu. I have never seen a menu with so many offerings. There were about 200 entree’s to choose from and over thirty different smoothies. After the waiter asked us twice for our order, we finally chose at random. Shaun picked a familiar, Asian standby, cashew chicken. I chose some sort of noodle bowl at random. We ordered spring rolls and a pineapple smoothie to share.

The first thing our waiter brought out was a plate piled high with bean sprouts, basil, curry leaves, and lettuce. At first we feared that the waiter had brought us the wrong order, but then we looked around and saw that every table was complete with a heaping bowl of greens. Then we deduced that it might be the equivalent of receiving a breadbasket at an Italian restaurant. Luckily we had the hungry men at our table to spy on, and it seemed that the pile of greens was designated for heaping on to the entrées that would come shortly.

Soon our spring rolls came. Unlike the spring rolls that I am used to—small little parcels with dry rice wrappers the consistency of philo dough containing veggie stuffing—these spring rolls were wrapped in a moist and chewy rice dough, and to my delight and my husband’s dismay, they had three magical shrimps in them. The Tank Noodle spring rolls were also much bigger than the Americanized spring rolls I have grown accustomed to. They were a good six inches long and stuffed to the gills with goodies. They were more like burritos than spring rolls.

Next, our pineapple smoothie came out, complete with tapioca balls at the bottom, and sliced strawberries and mangos littering the top. The drink was so cute in its presentation that it prompted the hungry men that we shared our table with to order smoothies of their own. The drink was cool and refreshing and not too sweet, but perfectly icy and delicious.

When our entrée’s came, I was surprised at the size of my bowl. It was closer in size to our bathroom sink than to any bowl I’ve ever seen. Along the top, beads of red grease danced above a tangle of thin rice noodles. Following the lead of our dining companions, I dumped some greens and some spices atop my soup and dug in. The noodles were perfect; they were warm and slithery perfection. The broth was pretty vague in flavor, but perhaps that was the point, as there were so many condiments to dress it up with.

My partner’s dish was predictable and familiar looking, but delicious nonetheless. I nibbled a cashew from his plate every now and again, appreciating the damaging delirium of MSG.

As I munched away at my noodle dish, I began to unearth some pretty startling food items buried within the strands of noodles. The first item that I discovered was a red cube, that looked vaguely like a beet, only cloudier, with a bit of a grayish tinge. I severed a bit of it into a small, testable chunk and popped it into my mouth. It was completely flavorless, and it had a texture that was a bit firmer than tofu.

The purple chunk was not the only unidentifiable item in my noodle bowl. Soon, I harvested a pink bit of what appeared to be an animal part. It was porous and spongy and it tasted porous and spongy. But otherwise it was pretty mild.

I continued on with my noodle munching for a time, watching a large piece of what I am pretty sure was the whole tongue of a goat-sized animal dodge my chopsticks. I was working up the nerve to try another prize.

As I stirred my pot further, my chopsticks fished out an egg—and not a chicken egg. I am fairly accustomed to fish eggs as well, and it was no fish egg that I have ever seen. It was about the size of an egg you might find in a small birds nest. Or, as my wild imagination suggested, a snakes den.

I skirted the egg for a while before I declared, “I’m trying this egg.” I popped it into my mouth.

After crunching through a layer that seemed the consistency of freezer burn, the yolk exploded in my mouth. A gooey, thick coating surged between each and every one of my teeth and I hurriedly forced a swallow, praying that I didn’t have a rude, all-American grossed out look on my face.

“I’m full,” I said, gulping greedily at my water.

Leaving the restaurant, I thanked my husband for spending the best $20 we have spent in a while.

“I hope you don’t think it’s a waste just because I didn’t finish,” I said, “because it was exactly what I needed.”

How do you escape?

Pho Xe Tang – Tank Restaurant
4953 N. Broadway
773-878-2253

Edit: I changed the title–I always think of better ones while running, and I went running after I posted.

Also, dig my new profile pic! I wish it were me, but its not. It’s a frame from a video by one of my favorite contemporary video artists, Cao Fei. This is from the 2002 video, Rabid Dogs. While this video is not up at our current exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Universal Experince: Art, Life, and the Tourists Eye, (one of my many jobs is in the Marketing Department there), you can see my other favorite in this exhibition–Jeff Koon’s 1986 scultpure, Rabbit, or as I like to call it (in a screaming, happy voice), “KOON BUNNY!” Here is a picture of that for your veiwing pleasure:

Anyhow, I’ll leave this post alone from now on, I swear. ::smile::
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I’m a Slave for You? The Emancipation of Britney Spears

© The Author, 2005

“It’s simply an outrage!”
“It’s disgusting!”
“I just can’t believe it.”

This is the college youth of America, my friends. They are eager and willing to participate in society—to form educated opinions, to hold intellectual discourse, to breathe a breath of fresh, albeit naive air onto the stale old mismanaged problems handed down to them by their elders. The youth of America has the energy, the will, the drive, and the un-jaded optimism to identify the wrongs of this world and create change. There is hope for this world yet.

“I know—it’s totally disgusting. Britney is just way to young to have a kid.”

Oh, wait. Never mind. I guess we’re hopeless after all.

Sometimes working at a college really gets me down. Yesterday, I was waiting for a student to show up for his appointment in the lobby of the Writing Center where I work, when I stumbled upon the aforementioned conversation. Before the Britney comment, I assumed that from the heated tone of the conversation, that this dialogue had to do with the fact that Oregon decided to annul the gay marriage certificates issued in that state, or perhaps it was a local discourse over Chicago public transit service cut backs, or of the FDA’s recent decision to lift the ban on silicone breast implants, despite gruesome disclosures of ruptured implants leaking silicone from women’s tear ducks, nostrils, and ears. I assumed that this heated conversation was about anything other than Britney Spears recent case of preggers. Sadly, I was wrong.

These silly students continued on at length about Britney’s fat ass (although most college kids and their doughy freshmen 15 are much worse off than Britney ever will be), how the young pop star was too young to have a child, how Ms. Spears and Jason What’s-His-Name are doomed for divorce, how Britney’s bun in the oven sets such a bad example for women, blah, blah, blah. I listened on, my mind angrily churning. And I’m not even a Britney fan.

Their trivial conversation got me thinking about a recently published Time Magazine article about Twixers, which for those of you who did not read the article, is a stupid term invented by marketers interested in persuading twenty something’s to leech off their parents so that mommy and daddy will foot the bill for expensive stuff that they “need” (you don’t want to know how many people I see with Ipods given to them by their mommy dearest), instead of getting off their butts and working to support themselves. Plus, the longer they leech, the longer Twixers can delay adhering to a budget scraped together from the earnings of an entry-level job that probably won’t allow them to spend their meager paychecks at the bar, or at the new H&M store opening soon at a mall near you.

This leeching works out pretty well for our economy. Not only does it provide businesses with the frivolous spending of Twixers and their dumbly accommodating parents, but it also provides the shit job market with a way to weed out many potential candidates for jobs, since the Time Magazine Twixer article states that most employers don’t consider anyone under 26 an adult. Aside from this Twixer situation irritating me as an independent, college educated, mature, and financially responsible 23 year old trying to find full time work in a world where I am apparently not a grown up, I am also annoyed at my peer counterparts who support this nightmarish behavior, because they are reinforcing the Twixter truth to our elders, which is creating a society where young people like myself get blindly lumped into their lame ass demographic. I typically hate labels, especially those invented by marketers, but when people so blithely play into the labels they have been given, without taking the time to create change and dismantle the stereotype—then the labels tend to stick.

I wish that these Twixers at the Writing Center would step out of their cushioned apathy for a moment to get even half as enthusiastic and opinionated about any issue that is not Britney Spears fetus. But the Twixter mentality that they embrace not only results in young people having even more difficulty with the always tough job of competing for full-time employment after college, but it also impedes their ability to give a shit about the world outside of the happenings in Britney’s uterus. Laziness sprawls out from the Twixer’s approach to independence and into the realm of how they regard the rest of the world. The average Twixter seems uninterested about formulating articulate opinions on government, global policy, culture, and society at large. Plus, I don’t think it is psychologically healthy (for parent or Twixer) for a 19 to 25-year old to have his or her mommy do their laundry and eat her food like mommy’s home is a goddamned hotel.

I don’t mean to insult anyone who is temporarily living at home after college while they conduct a job search, as long as they are being honest and hard on themselves—they need to know that no entry-level, post undergraduate job they will find can maintain the standard of living that they grew accustomed to in their parents home. Luckily, the personal growth that accompanies independence is more valuable than that. They need to know that formulating articulate and educated opinions is important, and valuable, and necessary for us to collectively plot and scheme ways to fix this shitty world we’ve been handed. These opinions and schemes will be what we use to create change when we are the bigwigs employing others. Also, those living at home to conduct a job search should be careful to respect their parents and their home during the (short) duration. Many awesome 18-25 year olds who are temporarily living at home understand and implement all of these things and more. But many do not, and I have to deal with their resignation to Twixerdom weekly. To them, I don’t mind being insulting.

Listening to the Twixers at the Writing Center prattle on about Britney’s bun in the oven, I was becoming enraged. I tried to suppress my big mouth—I begged it not to open and bite off the heads of these kids (because kids are apparently what they want to be seen as) to get their lips to stop flapping about how Britney’s fertilized egg is a travesty. But eventually, my opinions started burning a hole through the inside of my mouth, so I had to at least open it to let them out.

“Britney’s fetus is the absolute last concern I have for this world,” my diatribe began.

“Yeah, but she’s not going to be a good mom,” a mascara-ed, blonde lump of collegiate cleavage stated.

“Why? Because she bears her midriff? Well your mom probably did that too before she had you, and I’m sure she might still if your birth hasn’t ravaged her body. Besides that, even if Britney isn’t naturally a good mom, you damn well know that she has enough money to afford to for someone to raise her daughter well for her. What concerns me is the moms who have to cope with a welfare system and pay rates that are so shitty that they have to leave their kids home alone while they work their asses off for minimum wage.”

“But that marriage is going to end in divorce and then that kid will be from a broken home.”

“What is this—1950? How many of your parents are divorced?”

All the Twixters raised their hands. I raised both my hands.

“And look at how well off we all are. 50% of all marriages end in divorce, so you are probably right. But that has little bearing on how a kid is treated or turns out anymore.”

“Yeah, but she is so young,” a pimpled, pale, pile of sticks interjected.

“My mom had my when she was 19, and she was a good mom. Britney is 24. She has made more money than any of you will make in a lifetime. She has a career and she works her ass off. She has a family that gave up their entire lives so that Brittany could writhe about in halter-tops and sing pop songs. Something tells me that even if Brittany doesn’t embrace the joys of motherhood, her family will still ensure that the kid is spoiled rotten. There are a million and one things that need your attention in this world, and Britney’s fetus simply is not one of them.”

I wish that these students at the Writing Center and that all my peer counterparts could see that we are a powerful group. We may not have much spending power, but we are loud mouthed, opinionated, creative, and full of vibrant energy. If only we were all raised to channel those assets properly. If only we weren’t raised in a society that has newspapers that give Britney’s pregnancy front page billing (on days when Michael Jackson hasn’t chosen to wear pajamas to court), then perhaps the youth of America could value their minds and opinions enough to spend time thinking and discussing new strategies to all the real issues that this world has. But since our society is full of Bill O’Reily’s, Rush Limbaugh’s, and Chicago Sun Time’s—all of which prefer to forego real intellectual discourse for blind, emotional appeals that sell advisements—can we really expect more than the apathy, the blind resignation to ignorance that seems to be all that Twixers are willing to contribute to this world?

After I voiced my harsh analysis of their criticisms for Britney, a Twixter girl glared at me from beneath the shrouds of her hooded sweatshirt. Her apathy had been insulted and I was the culprit. From her Lip Smacker-ed lips, the mantra of the Twixers commenced,

“Whatever.”